This time of year, a lot of places are doing the white elephant gift exchanges.
Now, there are white elephant exchanges, and then there are *WHITE ELEPHANT EXCHANGES*. Back when I worked for the fruit company, I spent some time in the electrical CAD group. We held our holiday parties off-site, usually at the clubhouse in someone's condo complex.
There was a good reason for this. One, we tended to imbibe more than a bit at these affairs, and two, the exchange usually involved items that were less than, um, politically correct.
There was the year that the CAD library manager's brother took the taxidermy course. Part of his coursework included a stuffed pigeon. That pigeon became the highlight of a number of gift exchanges, and usually ended up perched over an office door.
Then there was the lovely copy of "Sexual Trivial Pursuit", which was usually boxed up in increasingly interesting ways, as to fool anyone as to what was in the box. The increasingly ratty game made multiple appearances before it finally disappeared from view.
And the unforgettable: We were having the holiday part definitely off campus, and in the spirit of the season, invited the finance and HR reps as well. We were well into the exchange when a nicely wrapped box was selected by the HR rep.
...Did you ever have a dept saying? Like a phrase that you'd say when it was really obvious that you were going to be stuck doing something less than pleasant for the cause? Well, yeah, we had one....
The nice HR rep unwrapped the box, and found a plastic case inside. And in that case were 95 spent shell-casings...
...and one live bullet.
The dept manager just about died. The HR manager just about died. The guy who provided the gift just about died. And then they all laughed like maniacs.
And "take one for the group" took on a whole new meaning
Posted by lsefton at December 14, 2004 09:42 PM